-Awareness. Know where everyone is one the ice at all times and you can dictate the play when you get the puck.
-Chemistry. Develop it by studying the people you are practicing with and learning their styles and tendencies. This allows you a greater sense of knowing which areas to go to or whether or not he is a viable option to pass the puck to at certain times.
-Intensity. Every push should be as hard as you can go. Lazy play is the worse habit you can develop.
-Saucer pass. The secret to a good saucer pass is all in the spin you put on the puck. Close to the same motion as a ping pong paddle.
-Set plays. Everybody knows what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Gives an advantage because with everyone on the same page it is harder to defend. If one of their defenders messes up it can blow the whole coverage.
-Small things are the big things. Be strong on the endboards, backcheck hard, don't dump it in to give it up look for the regroup (you should be aware where everyone is, at ALL times).
-Practice makes perfect. Work on your shot you get a better shot. Work on walking the blueline you get better at it. Any skill you practice you get better at.

You spend more than half a game on the bench. Use that time to learn things and find weakness in your opponent as a team and about individual guys you may go up against.

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Very true. I'm in a beer league at the B level, and I notice so many gaps in teams defense when I'm on the bench. Usually D guys play down too low on offense, but the other night I saw that every time a certain player on our team took the puck up the boards, 2-3 defenders rushed him leaving the middle open. I told my team and we had a lot more looks unchecked up the middle.

Some other advice I think every new person should listen to (I would know from experience). When you get the puck, DONT freak out and chuck it down the ice. Look around, skate up, and then maybe make a better pass.

Take stock on every faceoff. Look at the other 5 guys going against you. Is the best player on the team out there or is it the 2nd line? Are there fast guys or slow guy? Then adjust your style of play. If I see weaker players and I'm playing defense I'll take more chances. The other tip I have that seems like nobody I play with practices is play the score board. If the score is 2-1 you play differently than if it's 5-1. I constantly see guys making backhand blind saucer passes when my team is up by 1 goal, I just don't get it. Always hit the net.

Indeed, one of the biggest mistakes I see newer players make is moving the puck way too fast without a defender on them. Keep your head up, stay aware of your surroundings, and make the pass when the time is right, which is often not immediately after receiving the puck (though sometimes it is).

Also, you should be in constant motion whenever you're on the ice, on offense or defense. When you stand still the opponent can have a good read on where you are and adjust accordingly, by constantly moving your opponent must adapt and will often make mistakes. Plus it's way harder to get up to speed from a standstill when you need to react than it is when you're already in motion. Really the only exception to this is when you're screening the goalie, in pretty much all other situations, even when waiting for a pass at the point, it's better to be moving. If you're too tired to be in constant motion, take shorter shifts, and work on your cardio

I only started playing hockey last year and have been basically learning the game on my own. While I had the puck, I almost always had my top hand close to my hip. I didn't realize I was handcuffing myself until I saw this video from Hockeyshare.com: Stickhandling 101.

Keep your hands away from your body when you have the puck. It'll improve your stickhandling (obviously) and shooting.

Play the puck - If you lose the puck don't look for mistakes the painter made on the rafters, go after it!

Realize the level you're playing in - If you're playing in a beer league, chances are the goalies aren't going to be too good. You'll likely score a lot more goals just keeping it low than trying to shoot up high. Don't get too fancy on breakaways. About 90% of my breakaway goals are to fake a shot on the forehand to get the goalie to go down, go to the backhand to get the goalie to open up and then just slip it 5 hole. Works like a charm.

Do you have any suggestions about how to improve my positioning? It's the first season I play and i don't have much experience. I'm a RW and sometimes I wonder where the heck I should be to get a pass... I don't get many of them.

On a side note, my cardio is not too bad and I can skate quite fast, (nothing really noteworthy, just a bit above the average here) so often I find myself going after almost every single puck in the offensive zone, no matter who has lost it, even when the chances of a poke check are low - after all I'm new and they're good at defending it. That necessarily brings me out of position. Should I do that or not?

It's actually better for defensive zone positioning, since offensive zone positioning is such a fluid art. Generally you want to form a triangle with the three forwards, have one guy in front of the net, and don't bunch up.

Do you have any suggestions about how to improve my positioning? It's the first season I play and i don't have much experience. I'm a RW and sometimes I wonder where the heck I should be to get a pass... I don't get many of them.

On a side note, my cardio is not too bad and I can skate quite fast, (nothing really noteworthy, just a bit above the average here) so often I find myself going after almost every single puck in the offensive zone, no matter who has lost it, even when the chances of a poke check are low - after all I'm new and they're good at defending it. That necessarily brings me out of position. Should I do that or not?

Hope it makes sense

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Your gonna think I'm crazy, but an honest to God decent way to get a better idea of where you should be is to play Be a Pro mode on NHL 11 as whatever wing you are. It won't teach you everything but it helped me with my positioning no joke.

Definitely agree with the "you have more time than you think" comment. Note that this does NOT apply when you are trying to go coast-to-coast stickhandling through all five of the opposition, but when you get the puck on a pass. Beginners often toss it away like it's a hot potato and it results in turnovers. Instead, hold on to it for a second, pick your head up, SKATE WITH THE PUCK, and then try and make a pass or a move.

The "stick on the ice" comment reminds me of something I really hate, and that's teammates screaming "two hands on the stick" from the bench. It's really annoying when the 2-3 worst stickhandlers pretend like they know what they're talking about. There's many good reasons for having only one hand on the stick: poke checks, cutting off passing lanes, pulling the puck around someone, reaching for a loose puck, skating up ice full speed, etc.

My contribution: make your move earlier than you think. If you wait until the absolute last second to try your deke on a defender or goalie, you can get picked or shut down. You usually want to make the move a little earlier so that you have a bit of time and space to react to their reaction.

It's a problem for basically all new players, as you get more experienced and skilled you'll naturally just be more aware of your surroundings, and of how much time you have. Very much like driving a car, when you're a 16 year old new driver you don't see things coming, but as you gain experience you become very aware of what's going on around you at all times. But it's definitely worth concentrating on always keeping your head up and reading the defense, so that when you do get the puck you know exactly how much time you have.

Work on stuff you are NOT good at. Dont waste your time standing at the point taking a half hour windup and missing the net. A regular season has about 25 games, the warmup is about 5 mins, that adds up to over two hours of practice time if you use it properly.

Practice skating backwards with the puck, transitions, walking the line, taking and giving passes and do a couple of medium, then hard laps before stretching out.

Work on stuff you are NOT good at. Dont waste your time standing at the point taking a half hour windup and missing the net. A regular season has about 25 games, the warmup is about 5 mins, that adds up to over two hours of practice time if you use it properly.

Practice skating backwards with the puck, transitions, walking the line, taking and giving passes and do a couple of medium, then hard laps before stretching out.

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im actually going to so local tennis courts today to practice my backwards skating. im a n00b so i dont know how to do crossovers backwards. this really hurt me when i got caught flatfootes and needed to skate back wards. i can backwards skate at a good speed but my acceleration SUCKS. it takes me a bit to get up to speed.

but i hear you on warm ups. instead of firing pucks at the empty net i take time to skate around and transition since im new to all of this.

I played my best game ever yesterday thanks to this tip. I literally didn't worry about getting the puck taken away from me. If someone approched, I either pivoted or did some stick work that I didn't even know I could do. I feel like the game of hockey has finally opened up to me. No more a grind, but a display of skill and teamwork.

Your gonna think I'm crazy, but an honest to God decent way to get a better idea of where you should be is to play Be a Pro mode on NHL 11 as whatever wing you are. It won't teach you everything but it helped me with my positioning no joke.

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i agree with your original advice of 'position, position, position'. but learning via NHL11 seems like a bit of a gongshow. to be honest, i haven't played a lot of be a pro mode, but what i have played has had arrows telling me to play like i'm on a foosball table a lot of the time. and seems to lean extremely heavily on offensive cheating.

i guess it might be a useful tool if you're completely unaware of where you should be. but i wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in it if you want to apply it to the real world.

but positioning is easily the most important aspect of hockey. you might be able to skate like the wind, but if you don't have a clue where you're supposed to be...it does pretty much no good at all. and vice versa,